art – Page 167 – greg.org

American Painting Now Then

How to account for my dogged fascination with the temporary/permanent, futuristic/historic paradoxes of Expo art and architecture?
Buckminster Fuller’s 20-story Biosphere was far and away his greatest single success and the hit of the most successful modernist world’s fair, the Expo 67 in Montreal. And yet how little did I consider what was in it: a giant exhibit of the movies; The American Spirit, an exhibit of NASA satellites and space capsules; some crafts or whatever, and American Painting Now, 23 huge paintings commissioned by Alan Solomon from a “Who’s Who of modern art,” including :

James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Jim Dine, Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman, Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein. Their works illustrated trends such as abstract expressionism, op, pop, hardedge and geometric art. Like the space component, this part of the American exhibition was truly spectacular. The works, gigantic, simple and colourful, paid a vibrant tribute to the creative vitality of artists who now count among the great masters of 20th century painting.

Uh, and from Fuller, too, from the looks of that giant Dymaxion Map right there.

From a 1996 book on Voice of Fire, Barnett Newman’s own 17-foot tall contribution, we learn Solomon requested that the artists [all male?] “contribute paintings that are (a) large in scale and (b) vertical in format.”
I want to quote “Exorcism in Montreal,” the April 30, 1967 review by NY Times critic and famous Newman nemesis John Canaday, in its entirety, but I won’t:

Here we have the same old clique of names that have been handed the favors regularly in Venice and everywhere else on the circuit. A natural response to the list is “Oh, no, not again!” There is that tiresome Barnett Newman, who this time turns out three vertical stripes in two colors–but they are 17 feet high. There’s Jim Dine, with nothing but two big slabs of enameled canvas, in two flat colors, bearing in one corner a notation as to the brand of paint used–and the panels are 35 feet high. There is Roy Lichtenstein being Roy Lichtenstein again, but now 29 feet high.
There are all the rest of the club, not including some whose work was not fully installed on press day, and some whose work seems to me to have more substance than the ones listed, for instance James Rosenquist’s colossal “Firepole.” I have chosen the most vacuous because in this setting even they are part of a genuinely spectacular show fulfilling demands that could not have been met by any other kind of painting.
The dimensions given above tell that the paintings, most of them done for this spot (what other spot could hold them?), are gargantuan…they are played against strips of sail cloth in heights up to that of a 10-story building. It is as if the whole water-treading esthetic that they represent had been originated and sustained by some genii who knew that one day a form of painting bold enough and shallow enough to supply enormous bright banners for this pavilion would be necessary.

And then there’s Canaday’s assessment of the NASA artifacts, which basically hits it home for me with the art/science beauty paradox:

…since technology is creating the most beautiful objects today, and the most imaginative ones, Apollo might also be thought to have added one more muse to the group that he has always chaperoned.
Of course, there is no separating the fascination of the Apollo Command Module as a scientific object from its quality as an esthetic one, with its self-generated form and its patina burnt into it during the minutes of its descent rather than by centuries of weather, but it is a beautiful object all the same–inherently beautiful, and no other word than beautiful will do–as well as an historical monument with emotive associations And that is what great works of art used to be.

Ah, so it’s just the domes and the satelloons.

Update: From Architecture & Nature (2003), more details/corrections on who showed what: Kelly had a 30′ canvas, no title given. Robert Indiana, Cardinal Numbers. At just 13’x15′, Robert Motherwell’s Big Painting #2 was anything but. Lichtenstein: Big Modern Painting [sensing a theme here?] Helen Frankenthaler was The Woman Painter. And the Dymaxion Map was by Johns, “a small [sic] token to his friend Fuller’s desire to have the map be the centerpiece of the pavilion.”
Interior images of Biosphere, the US Pavilion at Expo 67 from The Dixon Slide Collection at McGill University. [mcgill.ca]
Q: was this the Ellsworth Kelly? [no, see update above]
Previously: Hmm. That satelloon & command module show was so good, they used it again at Expo 70 in Osaka.

Don’t Find The Warhols Yet, Anyway

So it looks like we won’t be finding the Warhols just yet. The Kickstarter project deadline came today, and only $265 of the $1400 or so required to print and ship a batch of giant Wanted posters had been pledged. A huge thanks to all the folks who pledged, though; it was and is very encouraging.
This doesn’t mean there won’t be giant Wanted posters; because frankly, they’d look awesome, and seeing them is at least half the point of the project. The project had to tread a fine, meandering line through that poster awesomeness on the one hand, the unofficial, unsanctioned publishing of the LAPD’s poster on the other, and–wait, how many hands do I get?–the obvious intellectual property issues. And of course, underpinning the entire thing is the obvious challenge it poses to our sympathies and sense of value: is it harder or more problematic to feel altruistic and volunteerish towards someone who’s lost 11 of his 80-plus Warhol paintings? Is the world actually a worse place because one of eight sets of these portraits is now missing? Did the answers to these questions change after the insurance company’s reward was rescinded and Weisman started trashtalking the investigators?
My own interests and motives–to realize and propagate these giant Warhol posters in various back rooms and offices of the art world–still depend on this presumption of a community chipping in and keeping an eye out to help find these missing artworks. It’s acting as if the art world is a small subdivision, where everyone joins the search to find the lost puppy. If there’s a more hilariously inapt metaphor for the art world than that, I guess I don’t know what it is.

Holden Caulfield, Curator

From the Observer profile of Massimiliano Gioni:

Growing up outside Milan in a town he likened to Newark, Mr. Gioni found himself drawn to art precisely because there were no adults talking to him about it. “It didn’t belong to the school or the teachers,” he said. “It was mine.”
When he was 14, he started reading the Futurists and the Dadaists–he can still recite by heart Tristan Tzara’s Manifesto of Mister Antipyrine–and listening to Sonic Youth, Fugazi, and Dinosaur Jr. He also started looking at the pictures in Artforum and Flash Art, and loving what he saw “because it was so strange.”

And from Stranger art critic Jen Graves’ review of “Parenthesis,” a new show at Western Bridge in Seattle:

But when I first read Tristan Tzara’s 1918 Dada manifesto in college, as a kid still angry over my parents’ messy divorce and the messy new relationships that followed, I was moved by Tzara’s childlike claim that “every product of disgust that is capable of becoming a negation of the family is dada.” If the family, like art, could not be a strong, safe nest, then it had to be abolished; it’s less painful to do away with families than to watch them fail. (Dada was always from the perspective of a disillusioned child.)

Either we’re in a neo-Dadaist moment right now, or Tzara’s Manifestos are the Catcher in the Rye of the art world. [via jason]

The Quality Of A Skillfully Executed LeWitt

Yale just held a panel discussion on conservation and artist intention. This kind of thing drives me a little crazy:

Not all work inevitably degrades, though. Some art improves with careful conservation. [Yale University Art Gallery director Jack] Reynolds showed a video of the installation of the massive Sol LeWitt wall drawing show at MASS MoCA. As the audience watched a team wearing paint masks carefully sand a wall, he recalled conditions in Paula Copper’s SoHo gallery in 1968, where the artist completed his first wall drawing. “That wall was anything but smooth, unpockmarked, and perfectly sanded,” he said. Reynolds also noted that many of LeWitt’s draftsmen have specialized in particular techniques, becoming “samurai warriors” in their crafts. A LeWitt skillfully executed today dwarfs the quality of what the artist himself regularly produced. [emphasis added]

Really? I mean, really? I guess if that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is. But I have to wonder about the implications of this samurai model for the conceptual essence of LeWitt’s work. Here’s how Holland Cotter described the wall drawings process in his review of Mass MOCA, which was organized with Yale:

It also stays resolutely impersonal, never sticking for long with any single graphic style, never showcasing a distinctive touch, never carrying a signature.
Although LeWitt came up with the initial designs, his relationship to the work was otherwise hands-off. He wrote instructions for how the work should be done — firm but easy-to-follow recipes with occasional sweeten-to-taste allowances — but hired other artists to do it. Some he trained, with the expectation that they would train others, who would in turn train still others, stretching on through generations.

So it’s an impersonal priesthood?
For a long time–since the 2000 rerospective at SFMOMA, actually, I’ve had a secret guerrilla LeWitt show planned in my head, where all the wall drawings are executed by civilians. Just take a catalogue with a bunch of instructions listed in it, and start doing them on the walls. I don’t know what that would look like, but for that reason alone, I’m interested to see it.
update: Andrew Russeth, who wrote the original ArtInfo article, just emailed in to claim the “skillful” and “quality” lingo, though I still think he captured the larger point accurately, which is the professionalization and upgraded production values of LeWitt’s wall drawings. [Which may be apt for some, especially later bodies of work like the fresco-like geometric shape murals of the 80’s and the high-gloss monochromes of the 90’s, which were, of course, created in the professionalized era.]
Andrew also mentioned that Dia:Beacon has had a “civilian” LeWitt drawing activity as part of their education program for visiting school groups:

A particular favorite (and one of the most unwieldy titled) with the younger kids was: “3. Wall Drawing #123: Copied lines. The first drafter draws a not straight vertical line as long as possible. The second drafter draws a line next to the first one, trying to copy it. The third drafter does the same, as do as many drafters as possible. Then the first drafter, followed by the others, copies the last line drawn until both ends of the wall are reached. 1972”

Which is great to hear, though I’d be more impressed to hear that they put the resulting drawing on public view. Here is Holland Cotter again on the Mass MOCA LeWitts:

Many of his drawings were done by supervised groups of art students — those at Mass MoCA included — in a learning-on-the-job tradition very similar to Renaissance workshop practice. A master artist provides the overarching concept; senior artists oversee production; apprentices do the grunt work and in the process discover and develop ideas of their own.

So LeWitt’s Conceptual Art construct is really just a return to guilds and craft.
The Best of Intentions [artinfo via 16miles]

It’s So Hard To Get Good Help Finding The Warhols These Days

Yeah, well it’s like five days until the Find The Warhols! project expires on Kickstarter, and we’re still a ways to go from our goal. Normally this would right about the time that a groundswell of sympathy for the victim kicks in, and everyone grabs a couple of posters and hits the streets of Bel Air, trying to find those damn Warhols and bring them home before the storm hits.
A groundswell which might be dampened somewhat by the collector unloading on the LAPD to the LA Times:

Richard L. Weisman, the noted art collector who made news recently when he decided to forgo a multimillion-dollar insurance policy for stolen art, had some critical words for the LAPD detectives investigating his case.
“Maybe if they would do their job … and spent some time looking for the art instead of being accusatory of the person who had it stolen, they might actually find it,” Weisman said in an interview last weekend.

Weisman then tiptoed into Pebble Beach Pollock territory with this denial of any involvement in the paintings’ disappearance: “The idea that I would steal from myself is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
So then you haven’t heard about the attempt to crowdsource 500 giant copies of the LAPD’s awesome Warhols wanted posters?
Collector who reported Warhol paintings stolen has tough words for LAPD [latimes]

Original = Higher Resolution

Lawrence Weschler narrates a slideshow of David Hockney’s iPhone/Brushes drawings for the NY Review of Books:

When he finishes one of these drawings, he sends it out into the world…
There’s about 15, 20 people, and he assumes that we send them on to other people if we like it.
One of the things that’s quite fascinating in this whole thing is that we have the original on our iPhone. Which is to say there’s no version that’s higher resolution than the one we have; we all have the same resolution. The ones you’re looking at right now are originals as well.

Technically, there are images and .brushes files. If you send Brushes images as .brushes files, their creation can be replayed like an animated movie. [It makes me interested to try to animate a Brushes work the way, say, William Kentridge does, treating the buildup of strokes as a narrative device. But that’s not the point right now.] But if Hockney just sends out images, then his friends have a file that is distinct and different from the “original,” and all its embedded generative data. It is certainly different from the image embedded in a slideshow.
But that’s a highly particular assumption of originality that pertains to this app. Weschler’s assumption that a copy is lower-resolution than an original has much broader implications. It’s an assumption that’s hardcoded into almost all our image reproduction technology, as I inadvertently discovered when I began trying to accurately reproduce the 300×404 pixels of 300×404, after Untitled (Cowboy) 2003 by Richard Prince, the original of which is a .jpg file.
An image invisibly but irrevocably sheds a phenomenal amount of data and time- and process-related content when it goes from .brushes file to .png or jpg. In precisely the opposite way, transferring 300×404 to anything other than the jpg it is turns out to involve the addition of an incredible amount of data, via interpolation, upgrading and smoothing and blending algorithms. Those original 121,200 pixels get drowned out completely.

Audio Slide Show: Lawrence Weschler on David Hockney’s iPhone Passion [nybooks]
Previously: 300×404: The making of

Norton Family Christmas Project At The MoMA Store

Wow. Every Christmas since 1988, Peter Norton and his family have commissioned artists to create a work, which they produced and sent out to friends, family and other art world folks. Now Norton, a MoMA trustee, is emptying out the closet and donating all the extra pieces for sale, with proceeds set to benefit PS1 [Norton was the Chairman of PS1 until just recently. I’ve helped do fundraising for both MoMA and PS1 for more than 15 years now.]
Anyway, the works are priced from just $45 for the 1990 gift, a CD by Richard Kostelanetz, to $675 [$750 for MoMA non-members] for the 2002 and 2005 gifts, an awesome doll house by Yinka Shonibare and an awesome music box by Christian Marclay, respectively, to $900/$1000 for 1997, Kara Walker’s classic silhouette pop-up book. If there’s a bargain in the bunch, it’s probably 2004, a beautiful glass bowl with molded handprints in the bottom by Do Ho Suh, which is just $225/$250. It’s a very MoMA-y, Christmas-y, and well executed gesture.

There are seven other editions, including the very awesome 1998, a blanket by Jim Hodges, that are only available if you buy the “complete set” for $5580/$6200. The quotation marks around “complete set” probably refer to the absence of the 2000 gift, a Mr Pointy figurine by Takashi Murakami, and the 2007 gift, a pair of tricky salt and pepper shakers by Nina Katchadourian.
So whether you’re filling in your collection for the years you were on the outs with the Nortons or you want to give a little something back after so many years of getting art free and unbidden in the mail, it’s a pretty sweet deal.
The Peter Norton Family Christmas Art Projects editions will go on sale October 28 at 9AM at MoMAstore.org/Norton [momastore.org]

First The Good News: Helio Oiticica Heirs Say Not Everything Burned After All

Note to self, the Brazilian media & world’s wire services: the guy standing outside his burning house and saying he lost everything does not, in fact, know that everything is lost.
Such is the case with the Projecto Helio Oiticica, where the artists’ heirs–his younger brother Cesar and his nephew Cesinha, mostly–have been able to find work that was unharmed in the fire and work that just suffered smoke damage or is otherwise restorable. As Cesinha told the Agencia Estado news service, “When you look at all black, it looks like it’s over, but when we opened the boxes scorched, we thinking works. Improved enough yesterday for today (Saturday to Sunday).”
Among the works found already: many of the Metaesquemas series, up to 350 color experiments in gouache on paper or cardboard from 1957-58. At least two bolides monochrome painted objects are intact, and more only need the glass replaced. several big installations are stored downtown at the Centro Municipal Hélio Oiticica. Two of the artist’s iconic Parangolés, wearable samba painting/banners, which were all thought to be lost, ” were saved by being in an exhibition in Belgium.”
Yeah, so those didn’t burn up, obviously. So at this point, there’s a bit of taking stock, trying to stay positive, a bit of walking back the early over-emotional reactions–and a bit of defensiveness and fingerpointing.
In another Agencia Estado report, Rio’s Secretary of Culture Jandira Feghali criticized Cesinha Oiticica directly for the loss of the works: “In my opinion, we lost a collection by a closed attitude of the heir, in particular.” She charged Cesinha with pocketing the $US20K/mo the city had been paying the PHO to maintain and conserve the collection, a contract which Rio’s new mayor had not renewed.
As Brazilian culture officials deal with the loss of so many works by the country’s most important contemporary artist–one whose recent critical reappraisal has mirrored Brazil’s own increasing prominence on the global stage–issues of private property and cultural patrimony are coming into play:

According to the secretary, lack a regulatory framework in the country to give better conditions to the giving public access and care for works of dead artists. For current law, works are private property of the heirs of artists and their use requires the permission of them.
“My regret is profound, because we tried it any other way. I personally talked to his nephew for us to have the transfer of collection to the Center Hélio Oiticica, for lending. We do not have budget to buy $ 200 million [the estimated value of Oiticica’s estate]. They could not give the entire collection, but a part. There must be a new way to deal with it and there is a law,” said the secretary.

So even after the smoke clears, there’ll still be a heated battle over control of Oiticica’s work.

Fire Destroys ‘90%’ Of Helio Oiticica’s Work

Unbelievable. The Brazilian artist Helio Oiticica refused to sell his work; his estate, the Projecto Helio Oiticica, held an estimated 95% of his entire output when he died in 1980. The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston had a truly spectacular, history-shaking show of Oiticica’s work in 2007, which traveled to the Tate. Roberta Smith said in the Times,

This show is like a large stone dropped into the calm waters of European-American art history. With its thick, lavishly illustrated catalog, it presents an enormously productive artist, writer and thinker whose work effortlessly spans the gap between Modern and Postmodern, Minimal and Post-Minimal. Reflecting inspirations from Mondrian to the samba music of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas (slums), it also bridges first- and third-world cultures in a way that has seldom been equaled.

Now O Globo reports [via artforum] that a fire in Oiticica’s brother’s house has destroyed “an estimated 90%” of the PHO’s holdings. Some installations and conceptual projects designed to be recreated are fine, of course, but his paintings and sculptures, including his incredible bolides [above], minimalist experiments in experiential color from the early 60s that remind me of Anne Truitt’s genre-breaking works, are gone.
Apparently, PHO–which is controlled by the artist’s two younger brothers–was in an ongoing dispute with the municipality of Rio over the government’s inadequate storage conditions and late exhibition payments for the work. As a result, PHO removed the work to the house–where it just burned up. This just tears me up inside to think about it.
A multi-year digitization project for Oiticica’s work and prodigious archives was nearly complete, though, and presumably the 7-volume catalogue raisonne will keep the artist’s seminal ideas in circulation. Without the works themselves, though, Oiticica could end up a digital ghost, haunting artists and art historians of the future.
update: O Globo has photos of the aftermath. The loss may be closer to 75%.
The exhibition catalogue for the MFAH show: Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Color [amazon]

Greatest Hits: Highlights From The LAPD Art Theft Detail’s Wanted Gallery

Considering the awesome graphic power of their official publications, you’d think I would have visited the Los Angeles Police Department’s Art Theft Detail website sooner. Well, let me make amends:
THE LAPD ART THEFT DETAIL WEBSITE IS FANTASTIC!
Seriously, there is some great art in LA. Or at least there was, until it got JACKED.
Richard Weisman’s Warhols may be the biggest art heist of the year–and it definitely has the greatest poster–but just take a look at this small, curated showcase of some of LA’s greatest stolen art. If you have seen any of it lately, of course, please contact the LAPD:
The stolen art alerts usually don’t mention any circumstances of the theft or the owner. The only clue is the case number, which is usually keyed to the date. Alexander Calder’s tabletop stabile, Little Roxbury (1956), [above] was stolen in 2005.

This simple, unassming drawing by Nayland Blake (2003), is just 9×12, small enough to stick in a folder or stack of mail. It was stolen in 2006.

Continue reading “Greatest Hits: Highlights From The LAPD Art Theft Detail’s Wanted Gallery”

On Second Thought, Don’t Find The Warhols??

Well that’s complicating. Richard Weisman has withdrawn his $25 million insurance claim for the 11 Andy Warhol paintings he reported stolen last month from his home in Los Angeles. As a result, the insurance company, Chartis, has withdrawn its offer of a $1 million reward for the works’ recovery.
As the Seattle Times reports,

he simply couldn’t stand the thought of insurance investigators poring through his personal records and interrogating his family and friends before he stood any chance of collecting.
“They turn you into a suspect. I just finally told them, ‘I’m not going to go through it for three to five years. Forget it,’ ” Weisman said. “That’s the only reason, and it’s a good enough reason.”
…
“It’s a lot of money he gave up,” [LAPD Art Detective Don] Hrycyk said. “It’s one of those puzzling aspects you have to take into account when you do your investigation.”

Uhm, ok! Hrycyk’s partner Mark Sommer also said his office had been having a difficult time contacting Weisman about the theft. Mhmm.
Weisman commissioned eight sets of the Athletes paintings in 1977. He has since given away four sets, and has kept a set or two on the market for the last few years. So obviously, he’s not short of Warhol Athletes. Bully for him, but what about the rest of us?
While I worried for a second or two, I realized that even without the reward, the Find The Warhols Project is still desperately needed. With so many Warhols out there, it’s more important than ever for collectors, traders, and brokers to have a handy reference to check the hotness of their wares.
I assume LAPD will issue a new Wanted Poster [update: they did, for the third time, apparently], but for the FTW! Project, I’m inclined to stick with the original. When posters go out, I will personally add the up-to-date reward information to each work by hand. Just like Thomas Kinkade.
And since Chartis, better known until July as the commercial insurance operation of AIG, is owned by the US government at the moment, taxpayers just saved $1 million – $25 million! It’s win-win-win!
Only 10 days left to join the Find The Warhols! Project [kickstarter.com]
See the original Find The Warhols! Project post [greg.org]

Deal

Maybe Jonathan Monk had the same misremembering of Walter de Maria as I did. His series at Lisson Gallery at Frieze comes with various, built-in resale price caps. [via sarah douglas for artinfo]

What I Looked At Today – Phillips Edition

Why, I feel just like Alma Thomas, what with my shopping around for a modernist painting technique to use on my Dutch camo Landscape series…
Anyway, I headed over to the Phillips Collection in search of Arthur Dove paintings. Huge trove, you know; Duncan Phillips was a longtime supporter of the artist and his work. Until yesterday, they had eight Doves up. But they started some work in a gallery, and so today they have just one: Red Sun, 1935, which is hanging in the little half stairway going to the Goh Annex. His line is promising, not nearly as fastidious as the 17th c. Dutch, of course, and thicker paint, which he mixes and blends on the canvas.
A couple of other unexpected pieces made it well worth the trip:

Continue reading “What I Looked At Today – Phillips Edition”

There’s No Telling What You’ll Have To Do

The late, great curator Walter Hopps on his Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles:

Anyway, one of the painters I loved–and I realized that a number of the artists, including [Robert] Irwin, also really loved him–was Giorgio Morandi. No one was showing Morandi in the Westeren United States. I had been traveling, and I came back and discovered that [Irving] Blum had not put an image of Morandi on the invitation. I was really furious. I said, “One in a thousand people who get our invitation will even know who Giorgio Morandi is. We’ve got to have one of his drawings on this invitation.”
Well, he hadn’t had a photographer come in to take a picture. I said: “Clear this desk off. I’m going in the back and choosing a drawing.” I picked out a Morandi drawing that was strong enough–it had glass over it–and I laid it down on the table. I took a piece of paper and laid it over the glass, took a soft pencil–and I’m not an artist; Blum would have been better because he can draw–and I traced out that Morandi drawing, to life size, in my own crude version. Traced that son of a bitch out on a blank piece of paper, and I said, “There’s the artwork.”
Blum said: “You can’t do that. You’ve just made a fake Morandi.”
I said: “You watch me do it. You just watch me do it.” And that went to the printer, so it’s printed in red with its line cut very elegantly on a paper. e waited to see who would identify it as a fake. Never–no one, no one. [Harald] Szeeman is right–there’s no telling what you’ll have to do.

The interview was originally published in Artforum in 1996, and is included in HUO’s interview anthology, A Brief History of Curating.

Echo I

This 1960 LIFE Magazine photo by Grey Villet of Antenna bouncing first message off Echo I satellite is a great, uh, echo of Trevor Paglen’s The Other Night Sky series.